Beardsley director says zoo didn’t give baboon to Animal Planet show

If you watched the second season premiere of the Animal Planet series “Finding Bigfoot” Sunday and saw what looked like Connecticut’s Beardsley Zoo director Gregg Dancho giving a terrified baboon to the show’s sasquatch seekers to use as bait, rest easy.

The primate exchange didn’t happen, Dancho said. He said the show did shoot some footage at the Bridgeport-based zoo, including an interview with him, but he didn’t think anything of it.

Then he got a call from his kids. “They told me ‘You’re going to be upset,’ ” Dancho said. Not only did it appear that the zoo gave the baboon to show star and Bigfoot research Cliff Barackman, but an interview with Dancho made it look like he believes in Bigfoot (he does not).

Though I couldn’t find a clip of Dancho’s appearance on line, I did spy this clip of the baboon use. And man, does that poor animal look freaked:

Dancho said he’s very upset by the episode. First, the zoo doesn’t even have a baboon. And if they did “we never would have allowed that,” Dancho said. “I have no idea where they got the baboon. That would be against zoo philosophy. That would be against my philosophy.”